Dear Colleagues,

Cardiorenovascular diseases remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality. They are characterized by multifaceted patho-(physio)logical changes in different vascular layers. Considerable research effort has provided insights into the pathogenesis of disease progression and its contributing signaling pathways. Ongoing research is required to understand the detailed mechanisms, contributors, and inhibitors, especially, to establish and test working treatment options. Due to the complex pathophysiology, various research models have been established in recent years, reflecting and evaluating different aspects of cardiorenovascular disease progression. Studying the pathways needs a manageable experimental setting depicting the complexity of its pathophysiological interrelation. Ongoing effort should be focused on improving the experimental disease models to identify diagnostic potential and maximize translation of results to humans. Essentially, this leads not only to better research quality and comparability, but also to accelerated development of new biomedical therapies. In parallel, more suitable disease models are accompanied with laboratory animal welfare, because unnecessary animal experiments can be avoided.

This Special Issue aims to shed more light on current developments of suitable in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro models studying cardiorenovascular pathology, and improved testing conditions and quality standards for a better reproducibility of studies. In the long term, this might not only help to reduce animal numbers and pain according to the 3R principle (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) of Russel and Burch, but also to identify the most promising targets to reduce the cardiovascular morbidity and mortality of patients.

In this Special Issue, the submission of original scientific reports, review articles, and commentaries in a broad topic of experimental models with the 3R thought of Russel and Burch is welcome. The issue seeks to cover the great effort and recent progress in experimental 3R models and help to find standardized settings to test pharmaceutical drugs in cardiorenovascular research.

Dr. Mirjam Schuchardt
Dr. Markus Tölle
Prof. Dr. Gilbert Schönfelder
Guest Editors

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• 3R: Reduce, Refine, Replace
• Cardiorenovascular disease, e.g., vascular calcification
• In vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo models in vessel pathology
• Reproducibility, open science